Feral hogs carry brucellosis and pseudorabies, and they tear up prime deer habitat like propane tank-shaped bulldozers. As such, the state isn't a big fan of the critters, and has relegated them to "nuisance animal" status. They're like overgrown nutria rats without the orange teeth.

That means there isn't much you can't do in pursuit of wild hogs in Louisiana, and Richie Mahony is doing what he can to drive the pests from the state -- one Boston butt at a time.

Mahony has seen every year the nearly incomprehensible damage wild hogs do to his deer-hunting land in Plaquemines Parish.

"Just five or six pigs will completely tear up a 30-by-50 (foot) section of land in one night," he said. "You'll have holes in there a foot-and-a-half-deep."

So Mahony the last two seasons has set up pen traps to catch the hogs. He ran across the mother lode during the pre-dawn hours Saturday morning.

Richie Mahony, left, and Randall Mahony show their haul from a Saturday morning trip to their Plaquemines Parish land. Courtesy photo

Mahony had to cross adjacent to the trap to access his deer stand, so he shone his flashlight into the pen. He couldn't tell exactly how many pigs would eventually end up in his freezer, but it looked like a bunch.

"I knew I had at least eight or nine," Mahony said.

He texted his brother Randall, who was hunting another stand, to let him know that whatever happened the rest of the morning, the hunt was already a good one.

But the hunt would get even better. Mahony's land is anything but trophy-deer territory. He knows he's not going to raise the state's next Boone & Crockett.

So he's not selective in what he shoots.

Just a little after 7 a.m., with the sun barely peeking over the horizon, a 6-point buck walked out, and Mahony dropped it in its tracks.

"That was just icing on the cake," he said.

With a nice buck on the ground, Mahony returned to the pen to check on his future meals. Mahony builds his pen traps using 100 feet of 5-foot fence material, and on the inside, he constructs a maze of wood and branches.

Deer on Mahony's land wouldn't draw a second glance in famed areas like Tensas Parish, so the Plaquemines Parish hunter can't afford to be selective. Courtesy photo

"We scatter corn throughout, and then put a big pile of corn at the back where the trigger is," he said.

The maze is designed to ensure the entire herd, called a sounder, makes it into the trap before the trigger is tripped.

It obviously worked in this case.

Randall joined Mahony at the trap, and the two brothers set out to dispatch the hogs with a .22.

"We kept counting them while they were all running around, and we kept coming up with 10," Mahony said. "But when they were all on the ground, we counted 11."

They brought home the bacon -- along with Mahony's 6-point -- in a 3/4-ton pickup that looked like it was about to pull a wheelie.